mainly undertaken by the PWD and the GSIDC, the underbelly of the development and infrastructure has been exposed.
There are several issues at play here. The blockage of close to Rs 600 crores could be a combination of several factors. Firstly, and the most blaring, is that in several cases, and this goes for projects across governments, the actual audit of the project need and cost is never done. Inflation is almost the norm and not the aberration. And since this is open knowledge and no trade secret, the actual value of works done for these Rs 400 crores, if the estimates and tendering had been strictly as per need and the correct costs, the outstanding would have been less by at least 30%. Therefore the escalation is hurting both the PWD and the GSIDC though the bulk of the dues would be from GSIDC.
Secondly, projects are often finalised and sanctioned at random, without quite looking at the funds available, which is why even the smallest of payments are stuck.
Herald had reported exactly a year ago that the government was holding the bills of contractors of as low as Rs 10,000 for almost five to six years saying there is a paucity of funds. It was found that in 2015-16, the Public Works Department, has many dues pending since 2006.
Some of the typical reasons for these chronic delays are the failure of contractors to submit time extension requests for projects, due to which payments have not been processed. Meanwhile, in some cases contractors have moved court while in many the delay is purely administrative. In figures obtained in 2015, it was found that 217 bills were pending from the year 2014, followed by 140 bills from 2013, 80 bills from 2012, 43 bills from 2011, nine bills from 2010, five bills from 2009, two bills from 2008, three bills from 2007 and three bills from 2006, only in the PWD.
Meanwhile there is an interesting insight on how bills are cleared according to a priority list, where salaries are obviously on top followed by labour payment, interest payment on loans, payment to vehicles on hire, bills of other departments, bills of deposit works, release of security deposit, contractor bills and advertisement bills. Therefore contractor bills come at number eight in the department’s priority list. The solution to this lies in far better planning of infrastructure and to stop using the PWD and the GSIDC as cash cows. But these “cows” are actually cash-strapped which makes it imperative for projects to be sanctioned judiciously not on a planned whim.
The formation of the Goa Government Contractors Forum may also have been timed keeping the elections in mind. However, it is difficult to imagine that the contractors and the PWD and GSIDC will ever be outright foes, because each of them has been a joint stakeholder in the public construction industry, which gives us roads like the Miramar-Dona Paula road, which remains a complete mess, even after its much delayed re-opening.
While contractor’s deserve sympathies for their blocked amounts, let there be no doubt that they will restrict themselves to press conferences and memorandums against the government. Ultimately all of them are joined in the hip.
